It is impossible to determine what divinities were worshipped here.
The placing of two altars together, one being divided into three
parts, and the addition of a third, seem to imply that three
divinities received worship in common, and that besides these two
other gods were honored in this sanctuary. The terra cotta deer
furnishes a clew, but is not decisive evidence; deer were sacred to
several divinities, among others to Apollo and Artemis. A marble
torso of about half life size, found on the declivity south of the
temple, has been identified with some degree of probability as
belonging to a statue of Apollo. Perhaps originally Apollo and Artemis
were honored here, and with them Leto; but in an Oscan inscription
discovered in 1897 the temple seems to be designated as belonging to
Minerva (p. 240), who was perhaps also worshipped with them.
At the time of the eruption the temple was in ruins. It may have been
in this condition only since the earthquake of 63, or for a longer
time. That the worship might not be abandoned a poor shrine was built
among the ruins, smaller than the old cella and a little further to
the right; a drum of a column, set up on the flag in the floor of the
cella, served as a pedestal for the image of the divinity.
CHAPTER XXI
_THE LARGE THEATRE_
Performances upon the stage were first given in Rome in the year 364
B.C.; a pestilence was raging, and the Romans thought to appease the
gods by a new kind of celebration in their honor. The performers were
brought from Etruria, and the exercises were limited to dancing, with
an accompaniment on the flute. There was as yet no Latin drama. The
first regular play was presented more than a century later, in 240
B.C., and the playwright was not a Roman but a Greek from Tarentum,
Livius Andronicus, who translated both tragedies and comedies from his
native tongue. The next dramatist was a Campanian, Gnaeus Naevius. The
building of a theatre was not yet thought of; a temporary wooden
platform was erected for the actors, and the spectators spread
themselves out on the green slope of a hillside facing it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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